Plot Summary
The story begins as a Raymond Chandler pastiche, and follows a private investigator named Clyde Umney as he goes about what he thinks is just another morning in 1930s Los Angeles. He soon discovers that his life as he knows it is falling apart. All of his lifelong friends and associates are abruptly departing in one fashion or other, for reasons ranging from winning the lottery to terminal cancer, and many of them express disdain towards Umney in place of farewells. He is brooding alone in his office when he receives his final client: Landry, the crime-fiction author who created him. Having suffered the loss of his wife and child as well as a severe case of shingles, Landry took an overdose of medication and found himself in the world of his creation. He demonstrates that his will is law in this world, and explains to a helpless Umney that he intends to take Umney's place to live a life of eternal adventure and excitement. Umney is cast into oblivion--or so it seems.
Instead, Umney finds himself in the year 1994, occupying the vacated body of his creator. Although he realizes his previous existence was a sham, he also despises the ugly, bland, and generally inadequate nature of the "real" world. He announces that he has begun to practice the craft of writing so that he might return to his fictional home--not to displace Landry, but rather so that he might end both of their existences for good in a final, brutal act of vengeance.
Read more about this topic: Umney's Last Case
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